Destiny Textbook Manager

By eSchool News

February 6th, 2007

Follett Software announced a statewide adoption of its Destiny Textbook Manager software throughout South Carolina. Using the program, South Carolina officials will centrally track every state-owned K-12 textbook throughout the state, a figure reportedly topping 2 million books. The South Carolina Department of Education is piloting the program in five districts this fall and will begin the process of implementing it in all of the state’s 1,150 schools starting this January, Follett said. The centralized system will be maintained on servers in the state education department’s office and will be distributed statewide via the web. The primary motivation behind the project is to ensure that all students have access to the textbooks they need, according to Jim White, the state’s manager of instructional materials. “While some districts in South Carolina are already using Destiny Textbook Manager, the state felt that a centralized implementation would make the program affordable for all districts,” he said. In addition to making Destiny Textbook Manager available to all schools via the web, the state also will provide every school with bar codes and a bar-code scanner to use in tracking state-owned books. South Carolina is also hoping to reap some savings by reducing the number of lost textbooks, according to White. “By state law, local districts are responsible for textbook loss and damage, and they bill students to recover their costs,” he said. “Although some schools have very good inventory systems in place, others don’t. We believe our new system will help all schools and districts keep better track of materials and recover fees when they’re due.” http://www.fsc.follett.com